Recently, a YouTuber who had grown tired of modern PC gaming successfully built an ultra-retro PC from 1996, but at the same time, he also discovered many unexpected things on the old hard drive—such as a cheat program for Doom II, and even the hard drive’s previous owner’s homework from 15 years ago?
In recent years, many PC components have been stuck in an endless state of shortage due to the booming growth of AI data centers. Disappointed by this, a creator named TrashBench had an idea: he spent several months collecting parts from various secondhand markets and vintage stores, and ultimately succeeded in rebuilding the computer that made him fall completely in love with gaming 30 years ago.
In a recent YouTube video, TrashBench said that after seeing gameplay footage of Need for Speed: Special Edition on his cousin’s computer at age 11, he fell completely in love with PC gaming, and by Christmas 1996, he finally received his first computer and thus began his gaming life.
And to recreate the feeling from back then, TrashBench spent the past few months scouring Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and local thrift stores, trying to find the parts that would let him rebuild his first-ever computer—and he ultimately succeeded.
This retro computer spanning 30 years is equipped with a 200MHz Pentium processor, an S3 Trio32 GPU, 32MB of RAM, and a Sound Blaster 16 sound card, matching the hardware configuration from their childhood memories. However, after installing an old hard drive, he also unexpectedly discovered many surprises in it.
“This contains someone’s 2001 science homework, plus cheat codes for Doom II!” TrashBench said, emphasizing that they couldn’t bring themselves to delete the content.
Therefore, he did not format this old hard drive; instead, he installed Windows 95 on another spare hard drive and started playing ultra-classic games such as Need for Speed and Duke Nukem 3D. After that, he also decided to install a 3D accelerator card in this retro computer to further boost its performance. However, when he found that the “3dfx Voodoo card,” which was regarded as a dream item back then, still commands a price of $1,000, he had to settle for the $100 Matrox Mystique.
In the end, this project also succeeded in reminding TrashBench why he fell in love with PC gaming back in the day, and he said that when capturing footage for videos, he often gets so engrossed in playing that an hour slips by before he knows it.
Source: KOCPC Chinese